Douglas Harrison

Practice Areas

Douglas Harrison is an independent commercial arbitrator. He also acts as a mediator and as legal counsel in select matters, including designing arbitral procedures and enforcing arbitral awards, as well as doing opinion work.

He has been a presiding arbitrator, co-arbitrator and sole arbitrator in numerous ad hoc arbitrations as well as in arbitrations under the rules of the AAA, ADR Institute of Canada, Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, ICC, ICDR, ICDR Canada, and the National Automobile Dealership Arbitration Program. His recent arbitration appointments have involved both domestic and international

disputes arising from a variety of commercial agreements, including supply agreements, license agreements, distributorships, franchises, shareholder agreements, consulting agreements, construction contracts, cyber insurance and commercial tenancies. They have covered a range of sectors, including automotive, consumer products, energy, financial services, food, heavy manufacturing, insurance, pharmaceuticals, and public infrastructure. In additional to contractual disputes, his recent mediation mandates have also included environmental issues, law firm partnerships, co-operatives, defamation, insurance coverage, and cryptocurrency mining.

Mr. Harrison is a Member Arbitrator and Mediator at Arbitration Place in Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, a member of the CPR Panels of Distinguished Neutrals as both an arbitrator and mediator (Global Panel, Product Liability Panel, and Pro Bono Panel) and is on the arbitration rosters of AAA-ICDR, ICDR Canada, ICC Canada, the ADR Institute of Canada, the Canadian Transportation Agency, the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission and the Scottish Arbitration Centre.

Mr. Harrison is the chair of the Toronto Commercial Arbitration Society, a member of the executive of the ICC Canada Arbitration Committee, and is a Co-Chair of the University Tribunal of the University of Toronto. He is the Director and a faculty member of the TCAS Gold Standard Course on Commercial Arbitration, a 40-hour course that permits students who successfully complete it to apply for a Q.Arb. designation from the ADR Institute of Canada. He is on the organizing committee of CanArbWeek and is a member of the Arbitration Committee of the ADR Institute of Canada.

Career

For over 30 years, Mr. Harrison was with Stikeman Elliott LLP in Toronto conducting a broad corporate commercial litigation and arbitration practice that included complex, high-value matters involving, among other things, breach of contract, competition law, insolvency and restructuring, supplier-procurement disputes, and class actions in a variety of sectors including aerospace, chemicals, financial services, food processing, logistics, manufacturing, media, natural resources and pharmaceuticals. His practice also included environmental law, product liability, defamation, professional liability, and directors and officers insurance. Mr. Harrison was Vice-Chair of the firm’s Claims & Risk Management Committee and a member of the firm’s Professional & Ethics Committee.

Professional Memberships

American Bar Association

Campaign for Greener Arbitrations, North America subcommittee

Canadian Bar Association

ICC Canada

Institute for Transnational Arbitration

International Arbitration Institute

International Bar Association

International Council for Commercial Arbitration

London Court of International Arbitration

Ontario Bar Association

The Advocates’ Society

Toronto Commercial Arbitration Society

Toronto Lawyers Association

Publications

"State Instrumentalities - Piercing the Corporate Veil - Canada", Enforcing Arbitral Awards Against States, IAI Series on International Arbitration No. 12, 2024 (forthcoming)

“Multi-Tiered Dispute Resolution Clauses: Jurisdictional Issue? C v. D, [2021] HKCFI 1474 – A Case Comment”, ADR Perspectives (ADR Institute of Canada) Vol. 8, No. 4, December 2021

Book review of UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts: An Article-by-Article Commentary by Eckart Brödermann (Kluwer, 2018), Canadian Business Law Journal, Vol. 63, 2020

“Removing an arbitrator for incapacity or undue delay”, Canadian Journal of Commercial Arbitration, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2019 (also abridged in the Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 editions of New York Dispute Resolution Lawyer)

The Law of Product Warnings and Recalls in Canada, 2nd ed., LexisNexis Canada, 2019 (with Alex Colangelo)

Awards

Education